A mother does not give birth to a mass murderer. She gives birth to an innocent infant. Mass murderers are shaped by our society starting in preschool or kindergarten. Schools have a no-tolerance policy for weapons, racist and sexist remarks by students. It is essential that they also adopt a strict no-tolerance policy regarding any put-downs, period. All students should be treated with respect and feel included in their school communities. Such a policy could be adopted immediately and would have zero cost. It may be an effective way of heading off behaviors that lead to these horrors.

Original intent

All the arguments on the right to bear arms miss the historical context. The Second Amendment was passed to allow us to protect ourselves from the British, should they try to retake the Colonies. Pure and simple.

And to that conservative claim, there is no God-given right to bear arms. He has nothing to do with it.

Brian Weirum, Woodacre

All I want for Christmas

My Christmas wish list: a federal assault-weapons ban, closing the gun-show background-check loophole, increased mental health funding for a program that uses school nurses to identify "outlier" students, those who don't fit in, who lack social skills, who are bullied, in order to provide them with support and/or referral.

New laws aren't answer

The lunatic in Newtown broke every law in the book: from murder to assault, to breaking and entering. Anyone who thinks passing more laws will make psychos obey the laws has to be as crazy as he was.

Rex Allen, Novato

Legacy opportunity

Dear President Obama: I have a dream, too ... that you could make the changes necessary to protect our children, our lives, our future. Let serious gun elimination and control be your legacy. You can do this. Yes, you can.

Madness vs. madness

Gun advocates have been saying that the mass shooting in Newtown and other recent shootings have all occurred in "gun-free zones" that attract shooters. They suggest that if the principal or teachers had been armed, these innocent deaths could have been prevented.

But the Lanza household - where Nancy Lanza was shot - was not a gun-free zone.

It seems that the gun advocates' solution would be for the mother to shoot the son before the son shot the mother. What kind of madness is this?

Target the ammo

As far as assault weapons are concerned, the cat's out of the bag: There's no way to get back those guns that are already out there in our communities.

Because of the National Rifle Association, people who want guns will always be able to buy them. Thus, it seems to me the most practical solution to limit these tragic mass killings is to limit the kind of ammunition available for semiautomatic guns: i.e., ban magazines and clips.

There's no amendment in the Constitution that mentions the government cannot control bullets. Imagine the outcomes in Connecticut, and every other site of mass gun murders, if the perpetrator had had to reload and re-aim every time he fired his gun. The NRA will never allow an assault-weapon ban. The next tactic, and maybe the only tactic, is to make an end run around the NRA and ban the kind of bullets that make those guns effective assault weapons for mass murders.